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Comparison of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

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Comparison of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft!

Somewhat similar to the concepts of primary and secondary groups are the concepts of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft. These are German terms and used to represent community and society or association respectively. These concepts were developed by German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies (1887) to differentiate between urban and rural life or community living and living in the mass society. The concept ‘gemeinschaft’ is closer to the concept of community.

According to Tonnies, it refers to “social relationships whatever function charac­terised by relative smallness, cohesion, long duration and emotional intensity”. It is characterised by a sense of solidarity and a common identity. There is a strong emphasis on shared values and sentiments, a “we-feeling”. Horace Miner (in International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 3, 1968) described it as referring to a ‘community of feeling’ (a kind of associative unity of ideas and emotions) and notes that it derives from likeness and shared life experience.

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People frequently interact with one another and tend to establish deep and long-term relationships. Social control in gemeinschaft is maintained through informal means such as moral persuasion, gossip, and even gestures.

By contrast, ‘gesellschaft’ is an ideal type characteristic of modern urban life. It is often conceptualised as a corporate or mass society—a society based on relations or roles and consisting of associational groups. It is characterised by individualism, mobility, impersonality, the pursuit of self-interest and an emphasis on progress rather than tradition. Shared values and total personal involvement become secondary.

Tonnies (1987) writes: “Everybody is by himself and isolated, and there exists a condition of tension against all others.” Gesellschaft, in short, is the logic of the market place, where relationships are contractual, impersonal and temporary. There is little sense of commonality and social relationships often grow out of immediate tasks, such as purchasing a product.

Largely, as a result of industrialisation, urbanisation, techno­logical revolution, division of labour and population growth, the gesellschaft has replaced the society of tradition with the society of contract. In this society, neither personal attachment nor traditional rights and duties are important. The relationships between men are determined by bargaining and defined in written agreement.

In the end, it may be noted that there is a great deal of similarity between the typologies of C.H. Cooley (primary and secondary groups), Ferdinand Tonnies (gemeinschaft and gesellschaft), Emile Durkheim (mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity) and Robert Redfield (folk and urban continuum). The regular rediscovery, restatement and reiteration of the same dichotomy of social types suggest that the distinction being made is very funda­mental.